The Crooked Castle

by Sarah Jean Horwitz

  Carmer backed away, slowly and silently. The same reeling sound he’d heard earlier probably meant that Yarlo was being yanked up toward the ceiling.

  “Why are we standing in the dark?” Tinkerton asked.

  There was another sound, like a lever being pulled, and several real lights—Carmer could only guess which of Rinka’s inventions powered them—sprang to life from the ceiling.

  “It sounded like you were having a party in here.” He chuckled at the likelihood of such an event.

  Carmer took a few more steps back—and collided with a terrarium with a solid clank.

  “What was that?” Tinkerton asked. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s nothing, Father . . .”

  Faster than Carmer imagined he could, Tinkerton strode across the airship, parted the curtain-like strings of fabric, and stood face-to-face with Carmer. A girl who must have been Rinka clutched feebly at his arm, trying to pull him back.

  “You,” Tinkerton said, staring wide-eyed at Carmer. “What are you doing here? Who gave you permission to enter this ship?”

  “Sir, please, I never meant—”

  “My daughter is ill, do you understand?” said Tinkerton. “This is a family matter, and my family is none of your concern.”

  “Father, it’s all right,” pleaded Rinka. She was older than Carmer had expected—nearly Bell’s age, sixteen or seventeen—with light brown skin and thick, waist-length dark hair that stuck out in all directions and, as Kitty Delphine might say, hadn’t seen a brush in a good long while. She was frightfully thin, her arms as skinny as some of the smaller branches crisscrossing her ceiling, and her plain green dress hung loosely on her frame.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Carmer apologized again. “But you asked me to look into the Wonder Show—”

  “I never asked you to pry into my private—”

  “And she’s what I found.” Well, one of the things I found, Carmer thought. But he was suddenly angry, seeing Tinkerton towering over his daughter like that. Maybe Grit had been right. Maybe Tinka was forcing his daughter to make his money for him. “How long, exactly, have you been claiming her ideas as your own?”

  Grit gasped inside his hat—she clearly hadn’t expected Carmer to speak to anyone like that—but Tinkerton didn’t notice.

  “You know nothing about me, or my daughter,” said Tinka with a furious swipe of his hand. Carmer jumped back. “And you will say nothing, boy, or—-”

  “Father, stop!” said Rinka. “I . . . I asked Carmer to come here.”

  Tinka slowly turned around. “You what?”

  Rinka looked as if she hadn’t realized that making such a declaration would require any further explanation. She fiddled with one of her hanging ribbons, twirling it nervously around her finger.

  “I asked him to come here,” she said again. “I found out that he . . . he likes to make things, too. Like me.”

  Tinkerton’s face softened so swiftly that Carmer was forced to reassess his snap evaluation of who was controlling who in this strange family dynamic.

  “Rinka.” Tinkerton sighed and took her thin hands; they were curiously knobbly, like an old woman’s. “We’ve talked about this. You can’t let just anyone into your life. They wouldn’t understand you. They wouldn’t be able to keep you safe.”

  Rinka seemed to fold in on herself then, as if she’d used up all her rebelliousness in two sentences. But Carmer had no time for backtracking.

  “Mr. Tinkerton, I’m sorry I . . . disturbed the two of you,” he said. “But . . . I found something else as well.”

  Rinka’s head snapped up; she shook it silently behind her father’s back. But Carmer had no choice.

  “Mr. Tinkerton,” said Carmer, “do you believe in faeries?”

  19.

  AN IMPOSSIBLE THING

  In the moment of tense silence that followed, Carmer half expected Tinkerton to laugh at him.

  He didn’t expect to be grabbed by the collar and shoved against the wall so hard that several model planes fell down from their perches and smashed to pieces on the floor.

  “Father!” cried Rinka.

  “Why,” snarled Tinkerton into Carmer’s face, “would you ask me such a ridiculous question?”

  It seemed he’d struck a nerve.

  Carmer was about to reply when his hat tossed itself off his head. Or rather, a furious faerie shoved it off.

  Grit hovered between Tinkerton and Carmer, a glowing smoke bomb held aloft.

  “Lay a hand on my friend again,” she warned. “And I will throw this in your stupid mustached face, hydrogen balloon or not.”

  Tinkerton jumped back, flailing into hanging diagrams and sending a paper lantern crashing to the floor.

  “What . . .” Tinkerton blinked. “Is that . . .”

  “Now, that really was threatening our ship,” Yarlo noted from wherever his jar was hidden.

  Tinkerton whipped around, searching for the voice, and then pointed a shaking hand at Carmer.

  “Out,” he said.

  “Mr. Tinkerton,” Carmer said, holding up his hands, though the glowing smoke bomb Grit held probably negated the peaceful gesture. He glared sideways at her. “Rinka is in danger. People have already died. Your people have already died—”

  “OUT,” repeated Tinkerton, spit flying from his mouth and sweat breaking out on his forehead. “We’ll have no more part in this . . . this sorcery! This lunacy!” He dragged Rinka behind him once more.

  “Rinka, please, you have to tell him—” Carmer pleaded, but Rinka was still fiercely shaking her head, not meeting Carmer’s eyes. “We have to figure out why they want you—”

  “OUT. NOW,” roared Tinkerton. “Or I will call the police, I swear I will!”

  Grit raised the smoke bomb higher, but Carmer shook his head.

  “But—” Grit protested.

  “Enough people have already gotten hurt,” Carmer said, slowly backing out toward the exit hatch.

  Grit huffed and followed suit, pausing only to stick out her tongue at Tinkerton.

  “And that’s why I hope you’ll listen to what I have to say,” Carmer continued as he dodged around the remaining ribbons and plants and models. “Because people will keep getting hurt if you ignore the Unseelie fae.”

  It was harder to see Rinka and Tinkerton through the hanging objects in the ship, but Carmer thought he saw Rinka start forward, just for a moment.

  Carmer opened the hatch and started climbing backward down the stairs. Just before he hit the ground, he called up into the ship: “Did you forget about Mikhail Hunt?”

  “The police, Mr. Carmer!” roared Tinkerton, but Carmer walked along the side of the ship to one of the windows, close enough so that Rinka would hear him.

  “What are you doing?” Grit whispered to Carmer.

  “He was one of your ornithopter pilots,” Carmer called through the window. “But he was taken by the Unseelie fae. They kidnapped him and filled his head full of faerie knots and used him as a warning, and now he’s dead.”

  Grit alighted on Carmer’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. Someone—Carmer assumed it was Tinkerton—slammed the window shut.

  “And now,” Carmer said, practically shouting, but he couldn’t keep his voice from breaking, “they’ve taken my friend Bell, your new pilot, because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. How many more people have to die, Rinka?”

  Carmer thought he knew Tinkerton well enough to bet on the man’s stubbornness—and his greed. He would never admit to anything that might take Rinka—or the business she brought him—away. But Rinka . . . Carmer was counting on her to be better. He was counting on her to help them pick away at the truth. Only then could they hope to understand how they might all survive.

  But there was no reply. Grit’s glow and the fog of his breath in the cold night air were his only company. Carmer sniffed.

  “It was worth a shot,” Grit said softly.

  Carmer turned to leave, boots crunching in the snow w
ith every step away from the Crooked Castle. They’d done everything they could for the Free Folk. They’d solved the mystery—the parts of it that were theirs to solve. They’d have to find another way to get Bell back. If Rinka and her father weren’t willing to meet them halfway, then what else could they do?

  How could they save someone who didn’t want to be saved?

  “Wait!”

  Carmer waited. Took a deep breath, and turned around.

  Rinka ran toward him from the ship, her father close behind, skinny brown limbs flying, wearing nothing but her dress against the chill. She didn’t even flinch when her bare feet hit the snow.

  “Rinka, no!” cried Tinkerton.

  But Rinka kept running—until she couldn’t. Something was slowing her down, like someone had put stones in her shoes—if she’d been wearing any at all. It was almost like the ground was pulling at her, holding her back.

  Carmer stepped toward her, and it took his brain a second to comprehend what he was seeing.

  The ground was pulling her back. Roots sprouted from Rinka’s toes and the backs of her ankles, and her legs took on the texture of brown tree bark. Smaller roots pushed themselves up from underneath the snow, trying to snag on to the shoots that came from her feet. She tried to shake them off, but every time she took a step, her legs became less girl, and more tree.

  More fae.

  Tinkerton finally caught up to her, and with one great yank from under her knees, managed to separate her feet from where they’d been planting themselves—actually planting themselves—into the ground. Rinka yelped in pain as her roots left the earth and reluctantly shrank back into her gnarled feet, as if parts of her had been left under the earth.

  “I—I’m sorry,” she said, panting slightly as she leaned into her father’s chest. “That happens sometimes.”

  Carmer had a pretty good idea why the Unseelie fae were so interested in Rinka Tinkerton even before Grit said it, her eyes as wide as he’d ever seen them:

  “You’re a changeling.”

  RINKA’S FEET, STILL looking more like the limbs of a tree than the limbs of a human, dangled over the side of her loft bed. Tinkerton tucked a blanket over her lap to hide them from view, but there was no unseeing what they’d seen. For all that she looked like a normal human girl—or at least, mostly normal—she was something else entirely.

  Carmer busied himself with tidying up one of the terrariums that had been knocked over, to give Rinka and her father a moment of privacy, but Grit was, as usual, in no mood to wait until “next Tuesday,” as she put it, for answers. She perched on the top of one of the hanging lanterns near Rinka’s bed.

  “How long have you known?” Grit asked, but her question wasn’t directed at Rinka; it was for Tinkerton.

  The man sighed and ran a hand over his face, disrupting the perfect mold of his mustache so one side pointed up and the other down. No one bothered to tell him about it.

  “If I’m being honest,” he said, and Grit nearly snorted; it was clearly a first for him. “I had my suspicions since the very night it happened.”

  Tinkerton looked exhausted, as if he could barely stand up, and scanned the room halfheartedly for a chair. Rinka reached up somewhere by her head and yanked on one of her many levers with surprising strength. A bundle of branches swung out from the wall, wide enough to make a small bench, and Rinka plopped one of the pillows from her bed onto it. Tinkerton sank into the seat with a grateful nod.

  “Rinka’s mother,” Tinkerton explained, “well, my . . . first daughter’s mother, died just after she was born. But my daughter was . . . fine. She was . . .”

  “A perfectly healthy baby?” Grit guessed.

  Tinkerton nodded with an apologetic glance at Rinka, who pulled her blankets up to her chin and looked away.

  “Until one night, there was a storm,” Tinkerton said. “I was a traveling actor at the time—that’s how I met my wife, in the theater—and my troupe had made camp en route to the next town. I’d never seen anything like it, and I hope never to again. The rain broke through our canvas tents. Trees were uprooted all around us; the horses ran off into the woods, and we never found them again. And in the morning . . . Rinka was sick.”

  “Except it wasn’t really her,” finished Grit. It was a rare thing, these days, for the fae to risk detection by swapping a human child with a sickly one of their own, but it wasn’t unheard of. The existence of Gideon Sharpe, a human boy raised by the Unseelies, was proof enough of that. “It was an Unseelie faerie, born sick or powerless or otherwise imperfect”—she couldn’t keep herself from spitting the word out—“glamoured and spelled to look human for the presumably short time until it died.”

  Carmer looked at her sharply, a warning glance to watch her tone, but Grit couldn’t help it. She’d been a seedling, yes, but still old enough to know what was going on around her when the other faeries of the court were still suggesting to her mother that really, wouldn’t it be kinder, in the end, to leave little, weak, and flightless Grettifrida with the humans and let nature take its course? To have a bright, lively child they could groom as one of their own, at least for a little while, instead?

  Grit knew what kind of odds Rinka had been up against.

  “Except you didn’t die when you were supposed to, did you?” she asked Rinka, who hid even farther under the covers and shrugged. Grit sighed. Some day, she would make a friend who knew how to take a compliment. Where was Bell Daisimer when you needed him?

  Oh, right.

  “I couldn’t travel anymore, of course,” said Tinkerton, placing a hand on Rinka’s knee. “So I returned to my mother’s clock-making shop in New York. Rinka’s . . . gifts became apparent before she was four. By the time she was nine, she was doing half the work in the store, at twice the speed I was, and eager for more.” Tinkerton reached out to stroke Rinka’s hair; she shrugged him off, blushing.

  “But it was growing harder to ignore the things about her that were . . . different,” continued Tinkerton.

  “Her glamour was wearing off,” Grit said. She looked at Rinka’s toes peeking out from under the blanket, and wondered how she hadn’t seen it before. “It still is.”

  Tinkerton nodded. “Even the city itself started to make her sick. She was better out in the country, out in the open air. That’s where we saw our first air show.”

  Rinka smiled a little at the memory.

  Tinkerton patted her hand. “And the rest, as they say, is history.”

  Grit, for one, saw the necessity for secrecy, even if she wasn’t thrilled about Tinkerton claiming all the credit—and the money—for his daughter’s inventions.

  “What a charmin’ story,” drawled Yarlo, and everyone jumped.

  Carmer nearly dropped the terrarium. Rinka narrowed her eyes, just visible above the covers, and pulled the lever to reel his jar over to them. At first glance, it appeared empty, but Grit knew Yarlo was just playing with Tinkerton.

  “Father,” said Rinka, easing out of bed to catch hold of the swinging jar. “This is Yarlo. He’s a faerie, too.” She wrapped her bony hands around the jar; the glass vibrated as if from some invisible pressure.

  “Granted,” said Yarlo, appearing instantly before them, “most of us have wings. I’m a special delivery.”

  “Well, aren’t we all special snowflakes,” groused Grit. “You forgot to mention the part where you’re evil, and we’re not.”

  “I take great offense at that,” sniffed Yarlo.

  “Rinka, who is this?” Tinkerton demanded. “And what is going on?”

  “Well, I . . . Father . . .” Rinka trailed off helplessly.

  Carmer was at her side in an instant, holding a broken glider model he’d rescued from the floor. “Can you help me with this?” he asked, extending the model out to her.

  “Carmer,” said Grit, rolling her eyes, “we’re a little busy here!”

  “The lady has a point,” Yarlo conceded.

  Carmer ignored them and turned back to Rinka
, gesturing to the glider. “I don’t think I could get this wing back into alignment . . .”

  Rinka grabbed the model from his hands, hunched over it, and beckoned for a tool set lying at her desk a few feet away.

  “Wire clippers, please,” she said, not looking at Carmer. He happily obliged, and Rinka set to work.

  Slowly, at first, but growing more confident as she worked, Rinka explained to him—to all of them—how the faeries had nearly always been with the Wonder Show. Rinka hardly noticed them when she was young; they would give her gliders an extra boost or sing to her as she fell asleep, or tend to her terrariums when she was too busy working on another invention. But as she got older, she started to recognize that her “little helpers” were everywhere; they’d made the show theirs as much as it was hers.

  “You being a changeling explains why the faeries were attracted to you—even if none of you realized it,” Grit said, after Rinka was done. “But the Unseelie Court”—she gestured to Yarlo—“that’s where this fool is from, by the way—don’t like faeries without a court gathering together, and gathering power, outside of their control. There’s a pretty big taboo against killing other faeries—even faeries outside your own court—which is why they haven’t attacked directly before now. But I don’t think they’ll stop until they force the Wonder Show apart . . . and get you under their thumb.” She nodded to Rinka.

  Grit realized she had practically echoed Yarlo’s earlier speech against the courts, but it was too late to take the words back now. He looked at her with a smug expression.

  “It’s simple, then,” said Tinkerton. “We disband the Wonder Show. Your little friends go their own way, sad as it may be. We lie low for a while, perhaps return to New York—”

  “No.”

  Surprisingly, it was Carmer who had spoken. He looked just as surprised as any of them.

  “I mean, it won’t work,” he clarified, shuffling his feet. “If the Unseelie faeries really want Rinka back, they won’t stop. They won’t stop hurting people, won’t stop sabotaging anything you make. And . . . and if you were never supposed to exist in the first place . . .”